LauncherPro Lets You Tweak Your Android Phone's Home Screen

Launcher Pro is an Android utility that lets you tweak the hot-buttons at the bottom of your phone's home screen, the font and colors of the widgets on the home screen, and gives users with Android 1.6 or 2.1 some of the features they're missing out on in 2.2.

If your phone is running Google's Android and you're a little tired of the way that it looks, one of the benefits to using Android is that you can download an app or utility that will change the default look and feel of your Android phone to suit your tastes. A while back we mentioned SlideScreen, an Android utility that replaced the launcher entirely with a stream of useful data from your social networks, inboxes, and calendar.

If you don't want to completely ditch the home screen but you do want the freedom to customize it, Launcher Pro is an Android utility that lets you tweak which apps and utilities have hot-buttons at the bottom of your phone's home screen, the font and colors of the widgets on the home screen, and gives users with Android 1.6 or 2.1 some of the features they're missing out on in 2.2.

LauncherPro adds the app buttons at the bottom of the home screen on any Android phone that Android 2.2 "Froyo" users are used to having, but it makes the icons a bit larger and gives you control over which apps have hot-buttons. You can even add documents, files, or contacts to those shortcuts for quick access. The buttons are always available, no matter which home screen you're on. The utility also allows you to change the appearance of the app buttons entirely so they're right for you.

Perhaps most notably, LauncherPro gives you up to seven home screens so you can spread out your commonly used apps and widgets, regardless of the type of phone you have. The app is still one of the few that gives you more home screens than the default without the need to root your device. The most recent version of LauncherPro allows you to customize the labels of apps, shortcuts, and folders on your phone's home screens so you can rename "contacts" to "peeps" if you really need to.

LauncherPro is free, but there's a paid version of the app for $2.99 USD that gives you more widgets (including a just-redesigned Facebook widget) for your home screen and more icons. For example, the LauncherPro Facebook and Twitter widgets are much larger than the default Android ones, and allow you to change views, respond to messages and posts, and more. The full version of the app also includes updated and enhanced contacts, calendar, clock, and weather widgets, all designed to give you control over the way your Android phone looks and behaves.